LITTLE LUCY’S WONDERFUL GLOBE

CHAPTER I. MOTHER BUNCH.

There was once a wonderful fortnight in little Lucy’s
life. One evening she went to bed very tired
and cross and hot, and in the morning when she looked
at her arms and legs they were all covered with red
spots, rather pretty to look at, only they were dry
and prickly.

Nurse was frightened when she looked at them.
She turned all the little sisters out of the night
nursery, covered Lucy up close, and ordered her not
to stir, certainly not to go into her bath. Then
there was a whispering and a running about, and Lucy
was half alarmed, but more pleased at being so important,
for she did not feel at all ill, and quite enjoyed
the tea and toast that Nurse brought up to her.
Just as she was beginning to think it rather tiresome
to lie there with nothing to do, except to watch the
flies buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs
and up came the doctor. He was an old friend,
very good-natured, and he made fun with Lucy about
having turned into a spotted leopard, just like the
cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker’s mantel-piece.
Indeed, he said he thought she was such a curiosity
that Mrs. Bunker would come for her and set her up
in the museum, and then he went away. Suppose,
oh, suppose she did!

Mrs. Bunker, or Mother Bunch, as Lucy and her brothers
and sisters called her, was housekeeper to their Uncle
Joseph. He was really their great uncle, and
they thought him any age you can imagine. They
would not have been much surprised to hear that he
sailed with Christopher Columbus, though he was a
strong, hale, active man, much less easily tired than
their own papa. He had been a ship’s surgeon
in his younger days, and had sailed all over the world,
and collected all sorts of curious things, besides
which he was a very wise and learned man, and had
made some great discovery. It was not
America. Lucy knew that her elderly brother understood
what it was, but it was not worth troubling her head
about, only somehow it made ships go safer, and so
he had had a pension given him as a reward.
He had come home and bought a house about a mile out